Here’s a really effective good lighting tip called the Rembrandt
Patch It is called that because this great painter used this
technique to paint his models.

Ok, so you’re outside on a sunny day and you are making a
Video and you have a subject for your shot.

If you place your subject with the sun directly on her with the
Sun coming over your shoulder she is going to squint!! No good!

If you have the sun over her shoulder and hitting you in the face
you will find she isn’t squinting but you will probably under expose
her face unless you can bounce some light into her face to reduce
the overall contrast. (In movies we do this all the time but use
lights and reflectors to help bring down that contrast) I am
assuming you don’t have the tools that I have.

Try positioning your subject so that the sun hits her face but in
such a way that you notice a triangular patch of light under her
eye that is the furthest from the sunlight. You may have to get
hour to turn her head slightly to see the patch but you will see
it.

Think of it as a circle with your subject in the middle and the sun
light coming from somewhere between your camera and 90
degrees to your right or left.

This is the Rembrandt Patch and is the same lighting as the great
painter used on his models. The only difference being that he
used the sunlight (diffused) coming in through a window on the
north side of his studio. He chose this because the shadows would
pretty well stay the same all day as apposed to shooting on the
south side where the shadows would continually move.

*A simple idea than most camcorder users don’t use”

It amazes me when I see friends who come back from a
vacation with numerous tapes of their trips and now have
to start figuring out what’s on each tape. Most of the time
It’s one big job trying to remember which church steeple that
was or in which city was the interesting grave yard etc. etc.
This is a very common problem that can be solved very
simply.

Go to your nearest plastic store and get a piece of rigid
plastic about 10” wide by 8 “high. You may be able to find
a piece around your house. Now take some thin black tape
and put it on the plastic so that you have 9 different areas.
You might divide the surface of the plastic by having
two vertical strips and two horizontal strips.

This will give you the 9 areas that you can write in with a dry erasable
marker. You could have less than 9 and you can make up your own designations on the plastic but you may want to have headings like: date, City, the tape number (important if you have lots of tape) time of day, and any other designations that will help you.

What you do now is keep this piece with you in your bag
whenever you are going to shoot something. You simply
make sure the camera lens is on the wide angle setting.
then just mark your plastic with the info and hold it out in
front of your camera for a few seconds before you shoot
anything.

All your tapes will be numbered and you will have a great
Identification of all the material you shot. Pretty simple
stuff but you will appreciate your efforts when you come
to look at the tapes later.